How to Keep Your House in Order

even if your natural state is 'creative hot mess'.

Welcome to Apple & Radish Chronicles: Where Handmade Meets Homegrown. 🌷🌈 With me, Katrina MacAllan! I’m over here creating more comfort, joy, meaning (and everyday preparedness) with simple, sustainable projects - and sending them to your inbox weekly - with fun tutorials, recipes and classes! Think of this as your ultimate cottage core homesteading guide - but with a little more spice. 💐

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Well hello!

I’ve never been a naturally tidy person.

I mean, I can be. Put me in a hotel room and my shoes will be elegantly placed in the cupboard, towels straightened and toiletries neatly lined up on the (wiped down) counter top.

It’s easy to keep things neat and tidy in a hotel room with minimal belongings. It’s even fun! But out in the real world, in my house, it’s not the same at all.

Things can get out of hand fast.

I put this down to several reasons:

1. Our house is small - a quirky three bedroom cottage. Really, if it was ever listed for sale it would be considered 2 beds plus a study. Nox’s room is tiny. Before Lachlan and Ollie moved out there were six of us living here. Now it’s only four (soon to be three once Nox moves to Brisbane for uni🥺), but there are still the belongings of six people. Luckily we do have outbuildings for storage.

2. We’re a creative family of makers, readers, doers and messers.

3. I *may* have a problem with fabric hoarding collecting?

4. I would rather make a batch of vitamin C syrup with the ripe-but-short-lived acerola cherries than sort out the junk drawer. (Great news: Recipe for that coming soon!)

I know minimalism is the new black (although maybe a little 2022??). More clear space in your home does make life more peaceful. I try to keep clutter in check. It’s just not my natural inclination.

I’ve thought about this a lot and discovered I have two modes of being (at least in relation to homemaking).

Mode One: Creating, making, cooking, mixing, sewing, gardening, doing.

Also known as ‘Creative Hot Mess Mode’. This mode sees me dragging out ingredients, bottles, equipment, fabric, notions or patterns. Or bringing in huge bunches of damp spinach from the garden or dirt crusted pumpkins. I’m taken over by a creative idea and I must see it through. Find me by following the trail of detritus. You’ll see fabric cuttings, sewing tools, vegetable peelings, dishes, jars or muddy boots at the door strewn about - depending on the project. At a minimum there’ll be dishes to wash. It can be a lot.

Mode Two: Tidying, sorting, purging, neatening, cleaning, ordering.

This mode sees me picking up and putting away, washing dishes, sweeping the floor, wiping surfaces. Less fun for me.

The thing that I’ve realised about myself is I cannot work in both modes at once. My brain and body only seem to work in one mode at a time.

Also, It’s not easy to switch between the two.

Some of my best friends are naturally tidy people and I’ve observed them closely. It’s clear we are not the same. They seem to delight in tidying up. Their homes appear to be effortlessly neat.

I feel like there’s a chunky analog dial inside me that clunks over from one setting to another - it takes effort to move me from one mode to the other. There’s resistance. My dial tends to sit more naturally at Creative Mode than Tidy Up Mode.

I’m a messer not a fighter.

Also I’m usually completely spent after focused creative time and lack the energy for thorough tidying up. I know I need to but I’m soooo tiiired!

However I have noticed a direct correlation between my stress levels and the level of disarray in the house. When the clean washing piles up on the couch, the floors need doing or the kitchen bench is cluttered I start to spiral.

Even though I’m not a natural tidy-upperer, I do feel better in an ordered, calm, clean environment.

You might suggest ‘Katrina just don’t embark on these messy creative projects.’ I have tried that. No can do. I’m a maker. My soul dies a slow death without creativity.

So I try very hard.

To maintain my sanity and my marriage*, I have found ways that work for my brain to find a balance between Mode One and Mode Two. Between creativity and order, mess and minimalism, projects and peace.

If, like me, maintaining a tidy, neat home does not come naturally to you (and you’d rather buy fabric and fowler jars than pay a housekeeper) I have some ideas that might help.

Here’s what I do to keep my home from swallowing me whole and maintain a semblance of normality and high functioning in the world: